A Growing Crisis Between China and Canada Has Big Global Implications

On December 1st, a business executive named Meng Wangzhou was arrested while transferring through the Vancouver airport. Her arrest came at the request of US authorities, who are seeking her extradition to the United States. Ms Meng is the CFO of the Chinese telecom giant Huawei and her case has drawn the attention of the highest reaches of the Chinese government.

About ten days after Meng’s arrest, a former Canadian diplomat and analyst with the International Crisis Group named Michael Kovrig was mysteriously detained in China. Soon after, another Canadian, businessman Micheal Spavor, was arrested under similarly opaque circumstances. These arrests are clearly intended as retribution for Canada’s acquiescence to America’s request for the extradition of Ms. Meng.

These incidents have plunged Canada into a diplomatic crisis. But this is a crisis that has implications far beyond Canada, according to my guest today Stephanie Carvin. Stephanie Carvin is an assistant professor of International affairs at Carlton University in Ottawa. She is also the host of A Podcast Called INTREPID.

In this episode we discuss both the details of this diplomatic crisis and why what is happening right now between China and Canada is something to which every observer of international affairs ought to be paying close attention.

Stephanie Carvin is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. Her research interests are in the area of international law, security, terrorism and technology. Currently, she is teaching in the areas of critical infrastructure protection, technology and warfare and foreign policy.

Stephanie holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and published her thesis as Prisoners of America’s Wars: From the Early Republic to Guantanamo (Columbia/Hurst, 2010). Her most recent book is Science, Law, Liberalism and the American Way of Warfare: The Quest for Humanity in Conflict” (Cambridge, 2015) co-authored with Michael J. Williams. In 2009 Carvin was a Visiting Scholar at George Washington University Law School and worked as a consultant to the US Department of Defense Law of War Working Group. From 2012-2015, she was an analyst with the Government of Canada focusing on national security issues.